Why not just do as linus said : "let's not care about patents until they
bring problems."
You host everything in europe (still no patents..), and let's think about
that again
when europe enforces patents.
Sam
PS: I don't want to start a troll, I just feel that free software gets
threatened by US
patents and the only way to get rid of this problem is by ignoring it...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Isaac To" <kkto@csis.hku.hk>
To: <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 4:40 AM
Subject: Re: XMMS and the new MP3 patent terms
> >>>>> "W" == W Paul Mills <wpmills@Mills-USA.com> writes:
>
> W> Are you saying even remove from non-free? Some of us have good
reason
> W> to use MP3 files from 3rd parties. For example:
> W> http://www.banjonews.com/
>
> If you look at the license of non-free software in the Debian archive and
> read the copyright file of each of them, you can find that they allow the
> binary code to be distributed in a Debian CD-ROM to be sold. They become
> non-free because of things like source code not provided, commercial *use*
> (rather than distribution) restrictions, disallowing changes to the code,
> etc. This is not the case for MP3 code. And in fact, I do think that
> patent encumbered things should be off from Debian once the patent holder
> starts to do something "real" with the patent, given that patents is the
> biggest threat to free software.
>
> You will be able to use MP3 players. Given that the format is so popular,
> somebody is going to setup a site so that you can add a source line to
your
> /etc/apt/sources.list to download MP3 players, even if Debian finally
> decided to stop distributing them. It just makes life of CD producers
> easier, by not forcing them to either pay Thomson or render their
> distribution less competitive by pruning those software.
>
> Regards,
> Isaac.
>
>
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